


Just Like Heaven

by queerofcups



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:40:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21923053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerofcups/pseuds/queerofcups
Summary: Dan and Phil have a party.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 19
Kudos: 80
Collections: Phandom Fic Fests Holiday Exchange 2019





	Just Like Heaven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brookwrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brookwrites/gifts).



> You asked for a snowy scene and I can confirm that there is snow in this fic. It got away from me a bit, but I hope you like it! Thanks so much to J for the quick and thorough beta!

_Coffee_

  
Dan wanders out into the kitchen, yawning and reaching his arms up and up until he hears the early morning cracks and pops of his shoulders and back. 

He could have slept at least another half hour, but he’d stirred and the other side of the bed was empty. That’s not unusual on its own, his sleep schedule and Phil’s are normally staggered and only diverge more during the holidays. But Dan’s used to reaching over and finding softly furred thigh or the divot of Phil’s hip, just right for Dan to rest his head on, in the morning.

And then he’d heard, through the fog of sleep, the sound of pots and pans being shifted. He’d groaned and rolled out of bed, shifting through his mental rolodex of supportive partner phrases that would talk Phil down from this particular ledge. 

“Phil--,” Dan starts.

“What if it's all terrible,” Phil says, staring at a tall silver pot Dan doesn’t think he’s ever seen before. “What if the potatoes are too chunky. Or too smooth.”

Dan’s been talking Phil down for years, as many years as Phil’s been talking him down. He’s fairly adept at figuring out how much of Phil’s worry is actual anxiety versus Phil’s own iteration of Dan’s white-knuckled desire for everything to be _perfect_. This is more of the latter, but there’s a thread of realness that Dan needs to attend to first. 

“I come bringing gifts,” Dan says and sets two light purple pills on the countertop. 

Phil blanches at the sight of them, “Have I been that bad?”

“No,” Dan sighs, wrapping an arm around Phil’s waist. “There’s nothing bad about your anxiety other than the discomfort it causes you.”

“I hate it when you therapy-talk me,” Phil says. 

Dan ignores him, continuing, “But, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, and this is a big deal. So I am reminding you that you have tools to manage your discomfort.”

“I really hate it when you therapy-talk me,” Phil repeats, grabbing the pills off the counter and turning to turn the faucet on and grab some water in the cup of his palm. 

“Oi mate,” Dan says, turning up his own volume a little. “You’re a little nutty right now, why not take a happy pill!”

Phil snickers through his nose as he swallows the water and pills. 

“Much better,” he says and kisses Dan with a wet face. His mouth tastes like coffee and tap water.

“C’mon,” Dan says, tugging Phil away from the imposing pot, “Come be my pillow, I wasn’t done sleeping.”

* * *

  
_Cold Pizza_

“So,” Dan asks, staring at his screen. “Were you just going to...suddenly become a chef? Cancel the catering? What exactly was the plan.”

“I hadn’t thought it through,” Phil says, from somewhere in the vicinity of Dan’s knees.”I just woke up and knew dinner was going to be terrible. Or too posh. Or someone was going to have an allergic reaction to one of the weird dishes you ordered and it’d start an argument and someone calls one of us a poof and we have to kick everyone out.”

  
Dan takes a hand off his keyboard to dig it into Phil’s damp, flat hair. “First of all, I only ordered two things that didn’t come on the “Traditional English Christmas Dinner” menu and they’re both foods you love. You’re literally the reason I like celeriac, so you can fuck right off.”

Phil’s laugh is silent but Dan can feel it under his hand. 

“Second of all, the whole world knows we’re gay now, that’s like, why everyone’s coming over, so no one is going to be surprised or upset if we kick out someone who calls us a slur?”

“That’s not why we’re inviting everyone over!” Phil argues.

Dan closes his laptop--the poem wasn’t going anywhere today anyway, it's too cold and Christmas-y to write something about the things he’d learned in the desert--and looks at Phil.

Phil glances back at him, one cheek puffed out with the cold pizza they’d taken out for breakfast. 

“Phil,” Dan says, digging his heel into Phil’s thigh. 

“Dan,” Phil says, through a mouthful. 

Dan rolls his eyes. “You’re disgusting. And yes, it is. That’s why we’re able to have the families here for dinner. Because we don’t have to make stupid separate posts and act like we’re not splitting time between their houses. It’s a good thing.”

Phil, who’d masterminded the timeline of their coming out and also got visible goose-pimples when he talked too much about the ways they’d broken their own privacy, just grimaces.

“It’s a good thing,” he says, “But it’s not just because we’re gay. It’s because everyone knows. And everyone agreed to come. To our house. _Our_ house.”

Something about the way Phil says it makes something click in Dan’s head. 

  
“Are you having meet-the-parents anxiety right now?” Dan asks, not fighting the smile curling his mouth upward. “You know you’re a decade late, right? My mum loves you more than she loves me.”

The face Phil makes, guilty and a little embarrassed makes Dan coo and slide off the couch so he can properly pull Phil into a hug. 

“You absolute idiot,” Dan says, pressing kisses to Phil’s face. “You think my mum and nan aren’t going to like you now?”

“It’s different!” Phil says, even while he closes his eyes to let Dan kiss one of his eyebrows. “They know now! I don’t want them to think we just have people come cook for us every day and we don’t take care of each other.”

Dan shrugs. “They probably knew then. You saw the email. But fine. What will make your caveman brain feel like you’re taking care of the little missus? Do you want to make something?”

Phil nods. 

Dan sighs, “It’ll be a disaster. You’ve seen our baking videos.”

He gets up anyway, stretching and walking toward the shelf of shoes so he can shove his feet in a pair that are probably Phil’s. 

“Thanks,” Phil says. 

“I’m gonna get papped,” Dan sighs, “With my hair looking like this and the worst shirt in the world. There’s no way I don’t run into someone.”

He complains the whole way out the door, but Phil catches the corner of his smile. 

Phil watches Dan until he’s walked out of the door, then takes another bite of pizza.

* * *

_Chocolate Bonbons, the one thing they can’t fuck up too badly_

  
“How…,” Dan says, eyes a little wild. “How did we fuck up this badly?”

Phil looks at the slightly molten volcano of burned chocolate and cringes. “I honestly have no idea,” he admits, looking at Dan. 

Dan’s got flour on his PJs and, inexplicably, in his hair and he looks so perplexed. 

Phil leans over to kiss his cheek because the situation demands it.

Dan closes his eyes and leans a little of his weight onto Phil. “We should just. Let this cool off and throw the whole thing away. Pan, too.”

“We can’t throw away the pan,” Phil says, wrapping an arm around Dan’s waist and pulling out his phone so he can re-check the recipe. 

“We turned the oven up too high...and left them in too long.”

“Fucking bonbons,” Dan grumbles turning to the bag where the second set of supplies were. “I’ll chop up the chocolate. You ate half of it last time.”

Phil sticks his tongue out at Dan’s turned back and takes on the task of scraping the burned first attempt at bonbons off the pan. 

“Will you set up the bain-marie again?” Dan asks over the rhythmic sound of him chopping chocolate. 

“Of course,” Phil says and instead comes up behind Dan to wrap his arms around Dan’s waist. 

“This is an interesting cooking tactic,” Dan says mildly. 

“Thank you for humouring me,” Phil says and presses a kiss to the knobby top of Dan’s spine.

“You just wanted to see me in a frilly apron,” Dan says and Phil can just about hear the smile in his voice. “You perv.”

Phil giggles, pressing his forehead against Dan’s back. He squeezes him one more time and goes to grab the pots from the sink, feeling a little lighter than he’s felt all day. 

* * *

_Champagne_

  
The champagne Dan had chosen was drier than anything Phil would have ever picked out, but it cut through the sweetness of the bonbons like a reprieve. 

“We might have added too much icing sugar,” Phil whisper-yells into Dan’s ear so he can be heard over the din. 

Their flat isn’t small by any means, but it's full up with family members from both their sides who’ve been here all day and is only getting more packed with friends who’ve finished their own holiday to-dos and have dropped in on Dan and Phil’s. 

“You think, mate?” Dan asks. 

He’s gone pink with alcohol, laughter and the warmth of the flat. And probably all the cheek-pinching he’s gotten from his doddering great aunt, who seems to have just remembered who he is every time she lays eyes on him and exclaims about his precious dimple. 

Phil can relate to some degree. The dimple is adorable. 

Phil leans in and kisses Dan’s cheek, right in the dimple. 

“Hello there,” Dan says and turns to catch Phil’s mouth in a quick peck. 

Phil can feel the surprise run through both of them. There are a handful of people, mostly in this flat, who they’ve kissed in front of--the kind of quick kisses you give your partner that you don’t even remember because they’re kind of like breathing. 

But they’re here, in their flat full of people who surely love them but are only just getting the chance to _know_ them. 

It’s a split second, but they both look startled when they pull away from each other. 

“You taste like booze,” Dan says

“Get a room,” one of their friends hoots from across the flat. 

Dan flips them a bird, mouthing an apology to his Nan, who happens to catch it and grabs Phil to tug him into a long, warm hug. 

Phil squeezes him and gets a chance to breathe and look out across their flat--the catered meal, their questionable bonbons, the bottles of wine and champagne, and containers of homemade sweets.

It’s just started snowing lightly outside, the first snow of an unseasonably mild winter and it feels like Phil’s grabbed a little piece of perfection. 

Sparkling Water  
Things feel a little less like perfection when they say goodbye to their very last guest and look at the mess left behind.

“We should have gone the proper posh route and hired a cleaning crew,” Dan sighs. 

He picks up a stack of particularly precariously placed plates from the coffee table and makes a beeline for the kitchen. Phil follows him, grabbing strays cups and glasses as he goes.

“It’s probably not too late,” Dan says, squinting at Phil. His eyes are a little bloodshot. It’s late for Dan, which means it's far, far beyond Phil’s bedtime. The bottles of champagne are already turning a little sour in his stomach and he can feel the oncoming hangover starting to brew in the gentle swirl of the kitchen around him. 

“C’mon,” Phil says, opening the fridge and grabbing a glass bottle out of the fridge. “We can start cleaning in the morning. Get the paracetamol?” 

“It’s basically morning now,” Dan argues. Phil ignores him. He’s gotten very good at identifying when Dan is just arguing for the sake of argument, and this is that. 

“Bed,” Phil says instead and drags Dan out of the kitchen, toward their bedroom. 

They undress and prepare for bed mostly silent. Phil sighs when his head hits the pillow and the room can do all the gentle spinning it wants. 

“Hey,” Dan says, and a hand flops down onto Phil’s stomach. “Feel better now?”

“About?” Phil asks. 

“About,” Dan scoffs. “As if you weren’t freaking out about meeting people you’ve seen literally hundreds of times before like, 5 hours ago.” 

Phil sighs and sits up to drink his water, swishing it around his mouth until it stops fizzing so sharply. He swallows and lays back down. 

“Yes, Dan,” he says, only a little mocking. “I feel better, thanks to the bonbons.”

“Damn right,” Dan says. The flopped hand turns to an arm thrown over Phil’s chest and Dan’s chest pressed against his side. “Now shut up and go to bed. We have to look human for the cleaning service tomorrow.”  
  
“We’re not hiring a cleaning service,” Phil says. It’s not worth it, Dan’s already asleep. 

Phil sighs and closes his eyes, letting himself fall asleep as well. 


End file.
